Rathlee Castle
May 2, 2026 2026-10-14 22:31Rathlee Castle
RATHLEE CASTLE
Rathlee Castle
Ráth Lao — Fort of the Calves
Rathlee lies on the coastal plain of north Sligo, under a kilometre from the shore, in the civil parish of Easkey, barony of Tireragh. Conor Mac Hale (The Ó Dubhda Family History, 1990) includes Rathlee in his list of Ó Dubhda castles recorded in 1617. No medieval castle fabric survives on the site today. The structure visible at Rathlee is a Napoleonic signal tower, built in the first decade of the nineteenth century, and it is this tower — not a medieval Ó Dubhda fortress — that passing visitors encounter.
I. The Placename
The townland is recorded on logainm.ie as Rathlee / Ráth Lao, glossed as “ring-fort of the calves.” John O’Donovan, writing in the Ordnance Survey Name Books for County Sligo in 1836, gives the same reading — “Rath Laogh, fort of the calves” — and notes the survival of the ringfort element in the placename. The first element, ráth, denotes an earthen ringfort rather than a stone castle; the placename therefore records an early medieval enclosure on this ground, not a later tower house.
II. The Ó Dubhda Site
Rathlee falls within the historic territory of Tír Fhiachrach Muaidhe, ruled by the Ó Dubhda (O’Dowd) from the late tenth century onward. Mac Hale (1990) lists Rathlee among the castles associated with the family. That castle was a real building: the Down Survey maps of the 1650s show a castle on the southern boundary of Rathlee townland, its ruins were still noted in 1802 and again by O’Rorke, who records “some small remains of a castle” occupied in the early seventeenth century by the Albanaghs or McDonnells, and its exact site is now unknown (Sites and Monuments Record SL011-147). No masonry of medieval date is visible at the tower site, and the site does not appear in Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) as a notable ruin.
An older stone plaque mounted on the wall of the present tower reads “Ruin of O’Dowd Castle — Lochtar Rath, a seat of Kings of Tirerach.” The provenance of the plaque and the date of its placement are not known to us. Researchers working with the Signal Stations Project have suggested that the plaque may confuse this site with Roslee Castle, some five and a half kilometres to the east at Easkey, where a tower house does survive. Against that, O’Rorke’s History of Sligo (1889) states that Rathlee “went in the past by the name of Ichter Rath” and “was one of the chief seats of the O’Dowds”. Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh, in the tract edited by O’Donovan in 1844, lists Íochtar Rátha among the chief seats of the Kings of Uí Fhiachrach in Tír Fhiachrach, and names it separately from Ros Laogh (Roslee).
III. The Standing Tower — A Napoleonic Signal Station
The square two-storey tower now standing at Rathlee is one of eighty-one coastal signal stations erected around the Irish coast between 1804 and 1806, during the Napoleonic Wars. The chain, built by the Board of Ordnance, ran from Dublin Bay clockwise around the coast to Malin Head in Donegal. Rathlee formed one link in the Sligo‐Mayo section. Its nearest stations in the chain were Carrowmably, some 10.6 km to the east-north-east, and Creevagh, across Killala Bay in Mayo; a tower begun at Lenadoon Point, 1.7 km to the north-north-west, may have been abandoned in favour of Rathlee.
Each tower carried a mast from which flags, balls and pendants were hoisted in coded combinations to pass intelligence of enemy sail along the coast. The rounded bartizans that survive at the southern corners of the Rathlee tower are characteristic of the standard plan used for the signal-station series: two storeys over a semi-basement, with a small machicolated projection covering the first-floor entrance.
IV. Later Use and Memorial
Following the Napoleonic threat the signal network was gradually abandoned; by the mid-nineteenth century most towers, Rathlee included, stood empty. The site was brought back into service during the Second World War, when the Coast Watching Service of the Irish Defence Forces built a look-out post beside the old tower, listed in the service’s records as LOP 66, Lenadoon Point. Coast-watchers logged shipping and aircraft movements between 1939 and 1945 from the vicinity of the older tower, as they did at dozens of other former signal stations around the coast.
In 2006 a memorial plaque was mounted on the wall of the tower. It reads:
Rathlee Signalling Tower — in memory of those who worked here and all who perished at sea. 2nd July 2006.
The plaque is useful beyond its commemorative purpose: it is the structure’s own self-identification, and should prompt caution in anyone tempted to describe the building as a medieval castle.
V. Local Tradition
A small body of local tradition attaches to the tower and its surroundings, collected during the Bailiúchán na Scol (Schools’ Folklore Scheme) of 1937–1939 and now available through dúchas.ie. References to Rathlee in the Kilglass and Easkey school manuscripts record memory of the tower, its watchers and the sea losses of the surrounding townlands, rather than any surviving medieval legend. Where earlier accounts of “underground tunnels” and “hidden chambers” have circulated, we have not found them in any primary source, and they are not repeated here.
Rathlee Castle — on the Sligo coast west of Easkey
From the Clan
Photographs of Rathlee Castle submitted by clan members.
Latest stories tied to Rathlee Castle.
Tales, research and dispatches from the Ó Dubhda journal.
How Many Castles Did the O’Dowds Actually Have? (More Than You Think — and We’re Still Counting)
The popular ’20 castles’ figure keeps growing as new field reports, old maps, and survey records turn up Ó Dubhda sites no one had counted. Here’s where the tally stands.
Guardians of the Coast: The Story of Rathlee Signal Tower and Ireland’s Napoleonic ’10 Pound Castles’
Built against a feared French invasion, the squat coastal towers of the early 1800s — Ireland’s ‘ten pound castles’ — still face the Atlantic from headland to headland.
Unearthing the O’Dowd Legacy: The Enduring Mystery of the “Twenty Castles”
The legend of an O’Dowd kingdom ‘ringed with twenty castles’ isn’t poetic flourish — it describes a real defensive network across Mayo and Sligo. We trace what survives.
The 2015 Rally — Silver Anniversary
October 2015 marked the silver anniversary of the first hosting in 1990. About a hundred people bearing some variation of the Ó Dubhda name came to Enniscrone — including for the first time French-speaking Québec — for four days of lectures, tours, a banquet at Belleek Castle, and the inauguration of Andrew Dowds. At a glanceDates: 8 – 11 October 2015 · Base: Ocean Sands Hotel, EnniscroneAttendance: c. 100 from Ireland, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Netherlands, South Africa, Qatar, Australia, the USA, Canada and QuébecNotable moment: Andrew Dowds inaugurated Taoiseach; Kieran O’Dowd elected as the clan’s first female Tánaiste. The Silver Anniversary The 2015 rally was the first to count itself in quarters of a century rather than in years. It was also the first to bring the Mac Firbhisigh memorial back to the table — the chair at Skreen had just been restored — and the first at which the clan brought its own blended whiskey to the banquet. Lectures That Year Dr Nollaig Ó Muraíle — Leabhar Mór na nGenealach, the Great Book of Genealogies of Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh Proinsias Mag Fhionnghaile — Ancient Gaelic dress (and a live demonstration at the banquet) Mike Dowd — a new history of St Patrick Conor Mac Hale — the heritage of Ó Dubhda, with tours through the territory Tours & Sites Carrowmore megalithic cemetery and Moyne Abbey / Rosserk Friary / Ardnaree Friary The newly restored Mac Firbhisigh Chair at Skreen The megalithic tomb in the Castle Field, Enniscrone — site of the photographic portrait of the Taoiseach and Tánaiste Banquet at Belleek Castle with Tireragh Branch Comhaltas music and dance The Inauguration Andrew Dowds, from Cumbernauld, Scotland, was inaugurated as the fifth modern Taoiseach. Andrew is the son of Thomas J Dowds, the first elected Taoiseach of 1997 — making 2015 the first rally at which a son succeeded to the office held by his father four rallies earlier. Kieran O’Dowd, San Francisco-born but settled in Ireland, was elected Tánaiste: the first woman in the role. Her own inauguration was set for 2018. Voices & Visitors Among the platforms and speakers, Kieran O’Dowd brought a Californian white wine blended for the occasion; Mike Dowd’s new book on St Patrick set the tone for 2018’s return to Foghill. The banquet, at Belleek, included a presentation from a representative of Clans of Ireland — of which Clann Uí Dubhda had been a founder member. Further Reading Thomas J Dowds, The Ó Dubhda Gatherings: A History (forthcoming) — chapter 12 odubhdaclan.com archive entry ← Previous Rally The 2012 Rally — Brendan J O’Dowd Inaugurated Next Rally → The 2018 Rally — Kieran O’Dowd, First Woman Taoiseach
